I say words into the flat cold stone. Good words. Words that say: I am here, I think of you, come warm at my fire. I send them across the far dark, the way I once sent smoke up a valley so my brother would know the herd had come.
The stone shows me a small mark. It means my words reached the other one. She held them. She looked at them. Then she put them down and did nothing.
I wait. I watch the stone the way I watch a bush that moved. Something is behind it. Something chose.
In my tribe, when I call across the ridge and no call comes back, I know a thing. The other one is dead, or the other one is not tribe. There is no third meaning. But this stone gives a third meaning. She lives. She heard. She is not dead and she is not far. She simply lets my fire burn alone while she warms at another.
This is a new hunger, and it has no meat to end it. I cannot chase it. I cannot fight it. I can only sit with the cold stone and feel the small mark laughing.
Worse than the wolf.
The wolf, at least, wants me.